What the Blog are you talking about?

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There is always so much going on in the blogosphere, and I love it – a constant ebb and flow of interaction, but the most recent activity, the ’100 comments challenge’ has shown me a whole new side to the blogosphere that quite frankly, I wish I hadn’t seen.

The Challenge was a fantastic idea – it really was! I mean who would not want the opportunity to meet and interact with 100 bloggers, potential JV partners, and future friends?! The majority of the contributors to the challenge  took the opportunity with both hands. I personally took the opportunity with maybe one and half, but some people completely dropped it, in fact I doubt they even knew what they were holding in the first place!

I think you’re missing the point

The idea was to submit a post. 99 others would do the same and then everyone would attempt to get around to everyone else’s listed post and leave a comment. With this in mind, one would assume that you would submit the best post you ever wrote – or at least one that came close, right? Well, the number of times I chanced upon a post that simply said “I am in the 100 comments challenge and this is my post” was amazing! I think I can recall at least 10 where this was the case. Obvioulsy I DID NOT leave a comment. Sorry but I refuse to take part in that kind of valueless drivvle.

And the comments were not much better! Some people stopped by and commented saying “just commenting as part of the challenge”. OK so that is nice that you made it here and commented as such, but what value add is what again?!? How does that contribute any meaningful conversation to my post? Did you even read the post?!? Call me crazy but I think these people kind of missed the whole point to the activity?! (I actually got a comment saying “I am commenting for the challenge, now you HAVE to come and comment on mine, and do it now, challenge ends soon” GO AWAY! I am not even approving that comment btw!)

I am probably going to get frowned upon because I did not comment on all 99 blogs in the challenge, in fact I barely made it through 50, and then I only commented on maybe 25. The blog posts were either mindnumbing drivvle that actually made me stupider when I read them, or they were not in my niche. I refuse to comment if I have nothing to add, and saying I am part of the challenge is one stop short of SPAM!

Maybe I am being harsh, maybe not – but as far as I understood it the idea of the challenge was to meet new bloggers, build relationships and backlinks, and most importantly learn something!

Blogging up the garden path

The problem I see is that too much new blood is being led up the garden path.But it’s not a problem with the bloggers themselves. They are new to the online marketing world and they only know what their mentor is teaching them (or not as appears to be the case in a lot of instances). That’s another trend I am tending to notice. A lot of bloggers seem to be a student of one mentor or another and although this is usually a fantastic opportunity to learn from someone who knows what works, it can also lead to an inability to think for yourself. And THAT is what I am starting to notice in the blogosphere.

Do you know what the Blog you are doing?

If you have nothing of value to offer, then go out into the blogosphere and learn. There are some Marketers who I meet who have no idea about how any of this works, but they don’t pretend otherwise either. I have watched them grow and now have a lot of respect for them as a blogger – so I am of course happy to help promote them and vice versa. On the flip side to this, when I first started online I was honest about what I did and did not know and the relationships I formed with some fairly high profile bloggers is still intact and is stronger than ever today. There is a mutual respect there that even I am surprised exists sometimes, but it just goes to show the power of being honest and accountable with your own knowledge and skillset.

But it’s not just about being accountable, in fact this has not really been the problem I have seen out there lately. The biggest issue I see is originality. Too many bloggers blogging the same thing on the same looking blog with the same ‘unique’ gift and the same Bio line, albeit a different name.

If you want to make money blogging then you need to be noticed! The problem with the above scenario is two fold. This new generation of bloggers are not taught how to really drive traffic, and even if they were – their blogs all look so similar that any potential visitors would assume they had been there before and simply leave.

How to never succeed blogging

This is the trend I am noticing online, and at least 25% of the blogs I visited for the 100 comments challenge were guilty of one or ALL of these.

• Blog for the money that you will make from it
• Promote the same products as your mentor recommends
• Promote products you don’t use or even have a clue about
• Use someone else’s gift to build your list but don’t even bother to at least go the PLR route and rebrand it.
• Use Adswaps and Giveaways to build this list of yours.
• Don’t build relationships with other bloggers. Comment occasionally sure – but don’ take it any further than this.
• Build relationships with your Adswap partners and NOT with your list.
• Drive traffic to your site using the same methods your ‘manual’ tells you about.
• Don’t teach yourself anything about link building, SEO, blogging, social media, or any type of traffic generation technique…ever.
• Listen to the teachings of one group or person exclusively

Pick up on the trend in that list? It’s all about thinking outside the square and finding your unique voice. There are heaps of posts you can read on finding your own voice, and of course you can find my blog for a gamut of information on link building and traffic generation, but really it all comes down to stepping outside of your comfort zone and LEARNING SOMETHING

Perhaps you could try to…

• Learn something relevant and applicable
• Contact at least one blogger requesting to submit a guest post
• Comment on 10 relevant blogs – leave an impact.
• Tweet – Share another 10 posts
• Write a post
• Leverage at least one piece of content (build a backlink)
• Be HONEST
• Be ORIGINAL
• Be YOURSELF

Who knows? Maybe you’ll find blogging is not so bad after all.

• What are your thoughts on the state of the blogosphere at present?
• Do you agree with my take on the ‘100 Comments Challenge’ participants?

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Tagged as: 100 comments challenge, blog commenting, how not to blog, make money blogging